Bjerrum Silla - Robata: Japanese home grilling

JAPANESE HOME
GRILLING

Silla Bjerrum

Photography
Keiko Oikawa

Over the last two decades we have witnessed a global explosion in sushi, with Japanese restaurants popping up in every corner of the world. And with that a more recent trend has emerged, combining sushi with robata. The word robata translates as fireside cooking, and is a Japanese style of grilling food, consisting of delicious skewered morsels of fish, shellfish, meat and vegetables. It is the perfect marriage of raw and cooked dishes, served alongside each other and often eaten like tapas, with a focus on sharing.

My love for robata has evolved through my career as a sushi chef, and in 2015 I had the opportunity to launch a sushi and robata restaurant inside Whole Foods Market, Kensington. Provenance and seasonality have always been at the core of my cooking, and the chefs and I strived to fine-tune classic robata and yakitori dishes to great acclaim. We were cooking on a gas robata grill, a wonderful piece of equipment; the provenance of the fish, meat and seasonal vegetables was second to none; and we produced a menu we were proud of. Yet it was not quite up there with the authentic Japanese dishes, and so I treated myself to the real deal a shichirin grill, sometimes called a konro grill and started playing around with charcoals and recipes.

I am married to a barbecue master, and we are renowned for throwing great summer parties: suckling pig, smoked briskets, jerk chicken, slow-cooked ribs all have become staples in our household. It is all about the wood, the chips, the charcoal and time, to create slow-cooked barbecue perfection. We even have a great tradition of smoking our turkey at Christmas. It is my husband Davids gig, but over the years I have fallen in love with our smoker, our drum barbecue and our selection of Weber grills, however nothing prepared me for owning a shichirin. It is a fast but very pure form of grilling; the heat of the binchotan charcoals literally locks in the flavours. It is like creating quality sushi: marrying simple techniques with great attention to detail, and using ingredients with natural flavour-enhancing properties. For traditional robata and yakitori, the focus is on umami, the fifth taste, which is accelerated with the use of soy-based sauces, miso, shiitake, etc.

At its core, robata is the Japanese version of grilling, a link to our original journey into gastronomy via fire, as cultures across the world developed their own version of grilling and barbecuing. The opinion is often held that the barbecue originated with Jamaican jerk chicken, which was cooked over direct and indirect heat using pimento wood in a fire pit, essentially grilling and smoking at the same time, giving jerk chicken its distinctive flavour.

The backyard formula we are now so familiar with is based on meat grilled over a direct gas or coal flame. It is fast and fairly easy to handle, as long as attention is paid to protein being fully cooked. The more adventurous home barbecues use slow cooking and indirect grilling, smoking over coals and/or wood with natural flavour enhancers added, with wood chips of many origins.

Robata differs significantly compared to the meat fest that we in the West have elevated to a god-like institution with the core principle of more is more. In contrast, robata is about delicacy, provenance and combining a selection of ingredients to create a nutritious, well-balanced meal. It is grilling over an open flame, so relatively fast, but it is also live theatre, with the robata as the central focal point. It is slow cooking fast.

In this book, you will find my interpretation of traditional recipes from Japan and Japanese-style eateries across the West. I have included some of my own twists and used artistic licence in my cooking techniques, all in the search for perfectly grilled Japanese food.

The traditional Japanese home was centred around the irori, an open stone-lined fire pit and the heart of the home, a focal point around which the family would gather for warmth, comfort and to cook daily meals. They would typically use wood from fallen trees, or more affluent households would use charcoal; the latter is important for the evolution of the robata, as it was smoke-free and would burn for longer than wood. The food grilled would be seasonal and local, a traditional menu with lots of fish, tofu and vegetable options.

Hokkaido is the larder of Japan, often talked about by the Japanese with a twinkle in their eye and a romantic longing for authentic Japanese food. The origin of robata stems from the Hokkaido region, where fishermen would cook their lunch onboard their vessels over small bincho charcoal fires, which were bought on to the boat in stone boxes to ensure they didnt set fire to the wooden boats. These impromptu daily treats of freshly grilled fish eventually became popular on land too, and this style of cooking spread from fishing villages inland, further supported by a government campaign, which spread its virtues widely across Japan in the decades after the Second World War. The custom eventually evolved into restaurants, which started to add meat and vegetables to the menu, cooked over the rectangular pits we now associate with robata.

The first robata restaurant opened in Sendai, in the Miyagi prefecture, in 1950, and was called Robata, a name which has stuck. The original format saw chefs sitting cross-legged behind a stone-walled sunken pit loaded with smouldering hot binchotan coals. Produce would typically be laid out in front of the chefs and customers would pick items, which were handed to the chefs by waiting staff, grilled, and handed back to the diners on large wooden ladles representing fishermens oars apparently the way in which the Hokkaido fishermen would share their lunch among boats.

Another very popular form of grilling over binchotan coals is yakitori. Yakitori directly translates as grilled chicken and evolved as an urban phenomenon. Small yakitori restaurants would pop up across a city as the perfect place to grab a few beers, some chilled sake and a few perfectly grilled chicken skewers. Traditionally, skewers are seasoned with tare sauce, a soy-based basting sauce, or just seasoned with salt as they come off the yakitori grill. Most parts of the chicken are used, including the popular chicken skin and chicken heart.

As such, robata and yakitori are not distinctively different; perhaps the differentiation is that robata had its roots in fish and vegetable dishes, traditionally eaten at home, and originating in Hokkaido and rural areas. Yakitori dishes originally consisted of chicken and seasonal vegetables, as these were cheap and accessible proteins in urban areas, and are a relatively new addition to binchotan cooking. The robata grill tends to be made of clay, which can withstand high temperatures, whereas a yakitori grill is narrower and typically made of reinforced steel strong enough to withstand the very high temperature. What both styles share is that they are grilled over binchotan coals and direct heat.